Muanya Onyiuke was the Innovation Team’s Urban Scholar this summer. Urban Scholars is a leadership and professional development internship program providing students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds with distinctive professional experience. Focused on essential leadership skills and creating resume-building career pathways, Urban Scholars is training the next generation of leaders. Learn more about the Minneapolis Urban Scholars […]

Anna Fineanganofo is an Urban Scholar intern on the Innovation Team this summer. Urban Scholars is a leadership and professional development internship program providing students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds with distinctive professional experience. Focused on essential leadership skills and creating resume-building career pathways, Urban Scholars is training the next generation of leaders. Learn […]

All too often, people solving problems come up with a great idea, and then they become so invested in that idea that they ignore clear signs that it is not actually well-matched to the problem. This is a very human tendency, and though our team is aware of it, we are certainly not immune to […]

If you’ve ever started a business, or spent time with entrepreneurs, one topic will inevitably come up when talking about the challenges of starting a business: access to capital. In March, the Innovation Team brought together City staff, entrepreneurs, technical assistance providers, and lenders to brainstorm how the City of Minneapolis could address gaps facing […]

Throughout our conversations with small business owners, we heard from many who would like to do business with the City but have met with various barriers to getting a contract. Processes were too complex or lengthy, contracts were too big for small businesses to take on, or they simply never got chosen because larger, more […]

“They can reach resources that I couldn’t access or had no knowledge of…I’m learning a lot, I’m getting the tools and knowledge I need to succeed. They’re very hands-on, I can go to them with any question and if they don’t know they’ll direct me to the person with the answer.” ― B-TAP Client, 2016 […]

A major milestone in our team’s equitable business development work was our community synthesis event. At this gathering, we invited back all 100+ people we had interviewed to that point, and asked them to wade into our data with us to identify themes with which to move forward. Collaborative Data Analysis Because our team of […]

Why do qualitative research? The first of our team’s guiding principles for community engagement is that we prioritize end users. This means that we prioritize the perspectives of those who will eventually be impacted by our work. They help us understand what the problem is, help us identify solutions that will work for them, and […]

Check out this report for updates from our rental housing priority area. Highlights include: 1. Considerable increase in the use of 311 in underserved communities 2. Outcomes from our accelerated rental housing re-inspection pilot 3. New partnership to reduce evictions with Fourth District Court and Hennepin County – Click below for the full update.

When we began working on our equitable business development priority, we discovered that there was no comprehensive inventory of businesses along major commercial streets in Minneapolis. We knew this information would be useful to us for understanding the landscape of businesses in the city: where are there more or less vacancies? What kinds of businesses […]